By the time that A soldier's embrace was published, Gordimer had already published The conservationalist and Burger's daughter. Both these major novels reveal the nature and the extent of Gordimer's view of broad development in South Africa. "Prophetically The conservationist is situated at the point where White history ends and Black history resumes." Burger's daughter deals with the challenge to White radicalism and the role it was to play in the light of the rise of the Black consciousness movements of the seventies. Rosa returns to South Africa to play a secondary, supportive role—but this is the destiny of Whites now. Gordimer has quoted Mongane Wally Serote's poem in a number of articles: "Blacks must learn to talk, whites must learn to listen." This idea is given concrete substance in July's people, where the White family, the Smales, have to learn to depend entirely on...